The Gold Standard of deep sky atlases! All Sky Edition: From Pole to Pole
- Over 30,000 non-stellar objects: 25,895 galaxies, 671 galaxy clusters, 1,617 open clusters, including those in the Magellanic Clouds, 170 globular clusters, including both Milky Way and Magellanic Cloud objects, 14 star clouds, 377 bright nebulae, 367 dark nebulae, 1,144 planetary nebulae, 260 radio sources, 35 X-ray sources
- 280,035 stars to visual 9.75 magnitude which is about what you will see in a 50mm finder scope. Stars are continuously tapered to create a more realistic perspective.
- 220 double page, (18 x 12 inches) charts at a scale of 1.85 cm per degree of declination.
- In 29 areas of heavy congestion, close-up charts are provided at 2 or 3 times normal scale with a stellar limiting magnitude approximating 11: North American Nebula/Pelican Nebula, Galaxy Cluster Abell 194, Gamma Cygni Region, M11/Scutum Star Cloud, Galaxy Clusters Abell 2197/2199, Virgo Galaxy Cluster, Perseus Cluster, Abell 426, Galaxy Cluster Abell 194, Galaxy Cluster Abell 779, Trifid Nebula/Lagoon Nebula, Galaxy Cluster Abell 262, Galaxy Cluster Abell 3574, Galaxy Clusters in Andromeda/Pisces, Hydra I Cluster, Abell 1060, Coma Cluster, Abell 1656, M6, Butterfly Cluster/M7, Hercules Galaxy Cluster, A 2151, Galaxy Cluster in Hydra/Centaurus, Galaxy Clustes in Coma Berenices/Leo, Zeta Scorpii Region, Galaxy Cluster Abell 1367, Centaurus Cluster, Abell 3526, M45, Pleiades, Large Magellanic Cloud (two page spread), Virgo/ Coma Galaxy Cluster, Tarantula Nebula, M11/ Scutum Star Cloud, Small Magellanic Cloud, Virgo Galaxy Cluster
Objects are indexed by Common Names, Star Names, Bayer Stars, Messier Objects, and NGC/IC Objects in the All Sky Edition and all 30,000+ non-stellar objects are indexed in the conpanion Deep Sky Field Guide. Know the name but not the position? No problem, these indexes make it a snap to find.
Where did the name Uranometria come from?
To the ancient Greeks, Urania was the Muse of the Heavens, and uranos was the word for the sky. In 1603, when Johann Bayer published his epochal atlas he named it Uranometria, and it became to celestial mapmaking what the Gutenberg Bible was to printing. For its era, Uranometria set an unprecedented and highly-advanced scientific, graphic and artistic standard for star charts. Nearly 400 years later, in 1987 Willmann-Bell published to universal world acclaim Uranometria 2000.0 which along with the advent of inexpensive modern telescopes revolutionized deep sky observing.
During the 1990s Willmann-Bell began the process that has culminated in a greatly expanded second edition. Telescopes were getting bigger, amateurs were imaging the sky with super-sensitive CCD cameras, and a new deep-sky atlas was needed. The data upon which to build this atlas had to be better than anything on the shelf.
Emil Bonanno created software to allow Willmann-Bell to visually inspect the position, size and orientation of deep sky objects against the Digitized Sky Survey and where necessary, correct and flawlessly record the data. Using Bonanno's software over a period of several years, Murray Cragin created a unified database of more than 30,000 deep sky objects. Even though Cragin started with the very best professional data available literally tens of thousands of corrections, large and small, were made. Never before has a large-scale atlas been based on such accurate data. Next, Will Remaklus and Wil Tirion took that data and created superb maps of unsurpassed accuracy and beauty. The result is that when you point your telescope to an Uranometria 2000.0 object, you can be assured it will be there, and at the size and orientation plotted.
